The time period from the end of 1945 to the mid-1950s saw a wild blossoming in popular musical tastes from New England to Memphis and California. The big band sound was quietly disappearing from the charts and being replaced with Country, Western, Appalachian, black, and civil rights tunes emanating from our immigrant populations spread across the land.
Over the years, I have often wondered which early life events were determinant influencers in fashioning my worldview as an adult. How and when did these transformations take place? To what extent can a child’s perceptions and tentative conclusions be molded by his/her immediate environment and, especially, by parents, teachers, religious pastors, and political leaders?
Piaget, a psychologist in Switzerland, asked related questions in Geneva and was soon recognized world-wide as a leading figure in early childhood development. Does listening to the works of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin enhance our skills in mathematics? Also, how do our personal, spatial perceptions of kitchen phenomena in a Cartesian world affect our ability in solving geometry-related questions a decade later? Can we basically teach the surrounding children, the fundamental concepts of physics, chemistry, and mathematics in our homes? How do we teach a young person to think rationally, and yet encourage his/her emotional growth and sophistication?
These are profound issues that were beyond our limited skills, but, maybe, the folksy melodies emanating from typical home radios of the era might contain the intellectual germs, which we needed to succeed in daily life?
Could the popular songs of love, heartbreak, loneliness, uncertainty, unemployment, and poverty help create a post-war superman or superwoman, which the country badly needed for a bright future? Maybe, popular music would help save the day?